


tide-turner

by boychik



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen, Murder, Nightmares, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12231468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boychik/pseuds/boychik
Summary: After Cedric is killed, Hermione’s warnings begin.





	tide-turner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



After Cedric is killed, Hermione’s warnings begin. “A bit late for that, innit?” Harry says to her cheerlessly. Hermione frets, sounding like Professor Trelawney foreboding an especially clumpy spot of tea leaves. But it’s not like the Grim, Sirius the black dog, supposed premonition of death. Hermione insists it’s a sign, begging him not to go, stressing so much her hair starts to itch at the roots. She emerges the next day from her room, wan, red-eyed. Harry can tell she has been crying. But he can feel it too, an aura, like a long shadow moving in on them.

*

They are restless, sweating in the first freezing days of fall, having nightmares. In one, Hermione stares down a fetus in a cauldron, a sick aroma rising, mixing the faces of her parents, her professors, the Dark Lord and his underlings... In another, Harry raises the wand that delivers the killing blow, watches Cedric’s eyes widen in shock and fall closed again and again. This continues for a month. After they share a dream that they are suspended in the graveyard, cursed bodies twitching in excruciating agony, they meet in the common room. They walk at midnight, shrouded by the invisibility cloak, following a path lit by sconces’ flickering candlelight. 

*

They look in the library for answers. Hermione performs a spell that allows them access to the restricted section; normally shrieking books fall silent. She blazes through pages, searching for clues about their dark dreams. Twenty books in they find a cover emblazoned with the Dark Mark. They trace the snake with their fingertips, and suddenly are transported into a scene, not unlike the Pensieve. Only here, Harry and Hermione are older, strapped into chairs and handcuffed. Is this Azkaban? “...on trial for the murder of...” They strain to hear the aging judge, but as suddenly as they are plunged into the vision, they are pulled back to the library.

They start to walk the halls at night, every night.

*

The shadows cast on the walls do not belong to them. Such is the first of many signs that put them at unease. Harry sees graffiti scrawled in the bathroom: BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, POTTER. First Harry asks Myrtle, but it turns out none of the ghosts admit to knowing anything about it, in fact none of them can even see it. Hermione rounds the corner and finds herself slammed against the wall, nose smashed, blood on her fingers where she gingerly touches. They have the constant feeling of being followed, but when they turn around there’s no one there.

“Harry—” says Hermione breathlessly, “I think we’re being stalked—”

*  
They wake up to Ron’s body opened up and strewn across the common room. Hermione gasps, eyes filling with tears. She starts an incantation to try to seal off the room. Harry can’t look but he can’t look away. He wants to vomit. They are called into an investigation, a serious panel of professors looking at them disgustedly. Found with Ron’s body was a note claiming Harry and Hermione did it. “The time-turner, Harry,” Hermione whispers hoarsely, pawing through McGonagall’s office at night. And somehow Harry knows the tide has turned in Hogwarts. It is blood for blood in this castle. They will go back, and back, and back again...


End file.
